To help introduce your students to the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda explore testimonies and activities in IWitness.
GAM, op-eds / Thursday, April 7, 2016
​Once students have put the finishing touches on their videos and submitted them to their teachers, it’s time to start judging.
iwvc, iwitness video challenge / Thursday, April 7, 2016
While the average USC student was dragging themselves out of bed to make it to their first class after Spring Break, I was--rather jet-lagged--sitting in an 800 year old room cloaked in paintings of old intellectuals and world renowned writers in a tiny corridor of Hertford College at Oxford University, wondering how on Earth I could be so lucky to miss a week of school to hang out at one of the oldest, most prestigious centers of learning in the history of Western Civilization.
testimony, students, human rights, International Studies, op-eds / Monday, April 4, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is seeking applicants for three fellowships until Friday, April 15 and Sunday, May 1.
cagr, rutman teaching fellow, teaching fellow, teaching fellowship, texas / Friday, April 8, 2016
Stephen Smith will give a keynote address and New Dimensions in Testimony will be demoed at the festival's Alternate Realities interactive exhibition.
ndt, New Dimensions in Testimony, Stephen Smith / Monday, April 11, 2016
Michigan student Brandon Bartley shares how testimony inspired him when he participated in the IWitness Detroit program last summer.
advancement, appeal, iwitness, detroit / Tuesday, April 12, 2016
As the indexer for USC Shoah Foundation’s Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection, I have to listen carefully to hundreds of testimonies assigning keywords to each minute so that these stories will be accessible in the Visual History Archive. Now just in time for the 101st anniversary of the Armenian Genocide we will be integrating an additional 155 indexed testimonies into the Archive. I thought this would be a fitting time to highlight some of the most interesting aspects of the 245 testimonies that will be available in the Visual History Archive Online.
GAM, Armenian Genocide, op-eds / Wednesday, April 20, 2016
This month – National Poetry Month in the U.S. – is a great time to explore just how powerful words can be.  When it comes to understanding difficult moments in history, poetry and writing can help students process and express their own thoughts about the world. Explore these three ways you can bring poetry into your classroom using tools from Facing History’s partner, USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.
iwitness, Teacher Resource, Poetry Month, op-eds / Thursday, April 14, 2016
On Tuesday, April 19, Celina Biniaz and Edith Umugiraneza will read poetry they’ve written about their experiences during the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide, respectively, in “When Memories Unfold: Poetry After Genocide.”
celina biniaz, defy, edith umugiraneza, Poetry Month / Thursday, April 14, 2016
​USC Shoah Foundation’s consultant in Ukraine Anna Lenchovska shared the resources of USC Shoah Foundation at a roundtable discussion for educators at the Ukraine National Museum’s Memorial to the Victims of Holodomor in Kyiv on April 7.
Ukraine, anna lenchovska, holodomor / Friday, April 15, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation published 185 Armenian Genocide testimonies in the Visual History Archive on Friday, nearly tripling the size of the Institute’s Armenian Genocide collection.
Armenian, Armenian Genocide, armenian film foundation, Armenian Genocide Testimony Collection / Monday, April 18, 2016
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews premiered an original short film about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising featuring testimony from the Visual History Archive.
polin, poland, warsaw ghetto uprising, warsaw ghetto / Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Twenty-two and 71 years after surviving genocide, Edith Umugiraneza and Celina Biniaz, respectively, shared poetry they wrote about their experiences at a special event organized by DEFY, USC Shoah Foundation’s student association.
poetry, defy, celina binaz, edith umugiraneza / Wednesday, April 20, 2016
The newest activity in IWitness draws on testimonies of Holocaust survivors to spark students’ reflection on how identity, and the struggle to hide it, can affect people from all walks of life.
iwitness, IWitness activity, Claudia Wiedeman / Thursday, April 21, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation is expanding its efforts to develop educational resources about the Armenian Genocide with the creation of a new position devoted to the IWitness Armenia program.
iwitness, Armenian Genocide, dadourian / Friday, April 22, 2016
Passover, Bergen-Belsen, 1945. These two thoughts do not belong together: Bergen-Belsen, the epitome of captivity; Passover, the celebration of freedom from slavery.
passover, religion, bergen-belsen, op-eds / Friday, April 22, 2016
Aleksan Markaryan’s crystal-clear memory of the genocide against the Armenian people in 1915 has given him the distinction of being the last survivor interviewed by the Armenian Film Foundation for its collection of Armenian Genocide survivor and witness testimonies.
Armenian, Armenian Genocide, armenian survivor, armenian film foundation / Monday, April 25, 2016
As the Institute’s partner Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala (FAFG) records testimonies of survivors of the genocide in Guatemala, it has begun sending the first few testimony videos back to USC Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles, where staff are beginning to index them – the first step toward their eventual integration into the Visual History Archive and IWitness.
Guatemalan Genocide, indexing, visual history archive / Tuesday, April 26, 2016
As part of the IWitness Detroit program, USC Shoah Foundation education staff hosted a half-day IWitness workshop for educators at the Macomb Intermediate School District (MISD), Michigan, last Tuesday, April 19.
detroit, iwitness, workshop, presentation / Wednesday, April 27, 2016
News of the deadly bombs that ripped apart the Brussels airport terminal last month sent a shockwave through me. I know that line, that place. I have stood in that spot. The “what if” scenario is not what troubles me most, however.
GAM, Tolerance, education, op-eds / Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Neumark spoke to undergraduate students in Wolf Gruner's "Resistance to Genocide" class and donated two postcards he wrote while he was evading the Nazis.
holocaust survivor, cagr, wolf gruner / Thursday, April 28, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation Teaching Fellows Alina Bothe and Gertrud Pickhan’s course “The Deportation of Polish Jews from Berlin in 1938” has led to another family learning its fate for the first time and receiving a special memorial called a “Stolperstein.”
teaching fellow, Berlin / Friday, April 29, 2016
Diana Hekimian, an active member of the Armenian community in Los Angeles, found an original copy of one of the earliest reports of the 1915 genocide in Armenia: "The Diyarbekir Massacres and Kurdish Atrocities," by Thomas Mugerditchian.
armenian film foundation, Alice Shipley / Monday, May 2, 2016
USC Shoah Foundation’s ability to capture and preserve important information about each testimony has gotten a critical update.
its, visual history archive / Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah as it’s known in Hebrew, commemorates and honors the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. This year, people around the world will remember the victims of the Holocaust May 4-5, 2016.
GAM, holocaust, Rememberance, yom hashoah, iwitness, op-eds / Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Across the United States and in Europe, USC Shoah Foundation is helping to commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on May 4 and 5.
yom hashoah, Stephen Smith, Martin Smok, iwalk / Wednesday, May 4, 2016
As the son of two survivors of the Shoah and the husband of a daughter of two survivors, identifying as the Next Generation has been the essence of who I am. It is the prism through which I see and evaluate all worldly events. It was particularly my father’s life that affected me the most. He truly was a “survivor." He survived the war running for his life through Russia, Siberian labor camps and other lands in Asia. He survived losing his parents, five of his sisters their husbands and children. He escaped from his hometown in the Russian sector to a displaced person camp in in the American sector. He survived as a refugee in Belgium and then as an immigrant in the United States. He survived the loss of his wife at a young age raising three children as a single parent in a foreign land.
yom hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Next Generation, beginswithme, op-eds / Thursday, May 5, 2016
Educators can finish the school year with a three-part online professional development course from Echoes and Reflections on teaching the Holocaust using testimony from the Visual History Archive and other primary and secondary sources.
echoes and reflections / Thursday, May 5, 2016
A few weeks ago, a student I was interviewing for a profile I was writing on him for USC Shoah Foundation’s website said something interesting: “Growing up Jewish, the Holocaust is pretty much always there.” I could identify. As someone who went to Hebrew school twice a week, every week, from the age of 5 to 13, the Holocaust was something I was always aware of. I was taught about it frequently, both in religious and regular school.
holocaust, education, usc, Israel, op-eds / Thursday, May 5, 2016
The 2016-2017 Center Fellow at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research will be Alexander Korb, Ph.D., director of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester and scholar of the Holocaust in southeastern Europe.
cagr, fellowship / Friday, May 6, 2016

Pages